


how a demon burns

by silentsonata



Series: nice but inaccurate oneshots [8]
Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Angst, Angst and Feels, Anxious Crowley (Good Omens), Aziraphale's Bookshop (Good Omens), Colours, Hurt Crowley, M/M, Scene: Church in London 1941 (Good Omens), Scene: The Bookshop Fire (Good Omens), Shaky Hands
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-02
Updated: 2019-10-02
Packaged: 2020-11-15 02:08:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 883
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20858471
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/silentsonata/pseuds/silentsonata
Summary: In which Crowley's hands fail to grasp what is most important to him.





	how a demon burns

He had never been able to keep his hands still. It was as if a whole millennium’s worth of energy had been compressed into Crowley’s ten fingers, leaving him to tap out page after page of nervous Morse code on tables, shifting his weight left and right as if he could thereby find balance in his own life.

‘Balance’ was not a word in Crowley’s vocabulary. Not from the top of his asymmetrical haircut to the bottom of his shoes when he stood, always one shoe in front of the other in what can only be described as a very loose contrapposto. Crowley lived in extremes, sought thrills and pushed the limits and pursued the sensation of being alive, so that maybe, maybe, he could be pulled back into reality for a moment by the threat of discorporation. Middle ground, Crowley had decided, was a dangerous place for him to be. At least, when he had his back against the wall, trapped by the smiling monsters in his mind, there would be no ambush. Only when cornered would he know the exact place from where his demise would come. Only then, he would be able to spit in Death’s face and laugh as he turned away, ready to be chased down another day.

Middle ground was weakness, was complacency, was vulnerability, was everything that Crowley feared.

What he feared, more than anything else, was being forgotten. Crowley’s hands, holding a wine glass, would shake more than usual as thoughts like this crossed his mind, sending little tsunami-like ripples throughout the wine. He could imagine himself, drowning in a sea of mediocrity, sinking, sinking as the light of the surface grew dimmer, sinking for an eternity as the water above him stilled and no-one would ever know that he had fallen in. Crowley had an eternity to make memories, yes, but also an eternity to be forgotten.

Crowley very rarely felt the luxury of control. On a good day, his actions were futile. On a bad day, there were no actions of his own that he could speak of. If even his own mind betrayed him, what hope did he have of his hands obeying his will? His fingers trembled as they grasped the armrests of his chair (_a throne_, he thought, _fit for an exiled king_), almost as though he was holding them back from playing a requiem for days gone by.

Not that he wanted to go back to those times. Not that he missed being unconditionally loved.

He never stopped completely moving, as if anything short of living desperately, clinging onto the single strand of spider silk life had offered him, would turn him to stone. Crowley’s hands shook as they handed the bag of books to Aziraphale, amidst the smoking ruins of the church, and he tried to hide it, tried to act normally. But how was someone who had been thrown out for his ‘normal’ meant to act then?

_Fuck you_, his hands said to him, shaking at what Crowley felt was a solid ten on the Richter scale, _He either sees you for the demon you are, or he sees you for the demon you are. You’re a rollercoaster that’s stuck repeating the loop-de-loop and, one day, someone’s going to shut you down. Forever._

There was never really a ‘when’ for how Crowley fell in love with Aziraphale. It was always, would always be, a ‘during’. Crowley could get used to falling like this, freefalling, tumbling through the air as the wind nipped at his skin, head over heels over head over heels. Endless falling, ground nowhere in sight, and falling faster by the second. Just directionless, whirlwind-like falling, with the bitter tinge of unrequited love. This was dangerous middle ground, but there were no walls for him to flee to, no crevices for him to hide or be cornered in. This new freedom felt more uncomfortable than his confinement.

He pushed down the panic of it all with the air of a trained professional: he had grown accustomed to it a long time ago, back when falling meant broken wings and eyes tearing up with blood.

Forget black and white. Crowley lived in shades of neon green and electric blue and phoenix red. But no phoenix would rise from the ashes of the flames around him, red like his hair. As the fire devoured whole words at a time within the bookshop, Crowley’s whole body shook with the thought that he never told Aziraphale he loved him. As he looked around at Aziraphale’s world, which was collapsing around him, Crowley wondered if this was another circle of Hell that Beelzebub had created just for him.

He slammed his shaking hands against the wall, reaching with trembling fingers at the wisps of smoke that escaped him like ghosts, screaming. “Somebody killed my best friend!” The fire crackled, laughing at him. Crowley wished he hadn’t fallen with such reckless abandon. There was nothing left of either him or the book shop to save. There he was, every part of him lost to an angel he thought would never return, forced to his knees by the same event that had taken his hope.

Crowley loved in shades of flame red, and now it was burning him from the inside out.

**Author's Note:**

> this is day 1 of whump-tober: shaky hands (find [here](https://whumptober2019.tumblr.com/post/187356400823/october-approaches-and-so-does-whumptober-2019)) :D
> 
> art by my lovely friend, the crowley to my aziraphale
> 
> [Find me on Tumblr!](https://silent--sonata.tumblr.com/)   
[Chat to me on Discord!](https://discord.gg/pTcajxx)   



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